


Trial Run

by Demenior



Series: Jaegermorphs [1]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Pacific Rim/Evangelion AU, Spoiler effect for all three series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:03:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demenior/pseuds/Demenior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake and Rachel get their chance to try and pilot the new Jaeger- EVA 1.0, the first of it's kind and the same machine that Jake's brother nearly died in.<br/>They've been training for this for years, but there are always some things you can't be prepared for.<br/>The fact that their Jaeger might be talking to them is one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trial Run

The conn-pod of the Jaeger was a solid sphere with only one opening just large enough for one person to fit through at a time. The walls were three feet thick and it was entirely filled with a liquid similar to the relay gel used in normal Jeagers, but had been modified and Eva called it LCL. It was also pitch black.

Jake and Rachel were hovering nervously above the core, Jake picking absently at his driversuit—they were _extremely_ skintight to the point that he felt naked and he had to keep touching it to be sure he was wearing a suit at all. It was extremely thin and there was no extra padding like a normal suit.

“Your connection to the Jaeger will come from your movements—everything you do will be read through the liquid by the electronic pulses you generate. You want the least amount of interference. I’d almost rather you pilot naked,” Eva was saying to Rachel’s complaint about the Shatterdome staff staring at them.

Rachel glanced over to Jake, and he could tell she was just as terrified about getting into this dark, water-filled hole as he was.

He smiled at her, “If you’re scared I’ll go—”

“Ladies first,” she snapped, tying her hair back. She took a quick breath to steady herself and then lowered herself in.

“I thought it would be cold,” she muttered, and then dunked herself in.

While the last thing Jake wanted was to be in a cage, he didn’t want his copilot alone in one even more. He made a splash and scratched his shoulder on the edge. Rachel’s hand quickly found his in the water, and he squeezed hers tightly while he fought the initial panic about breathing in liquid.

At the moment he could barely see Rachel’s golden hair, but then they covered the hatch and the two of them were surrounded by darkness.

The conn-pod would be inserted into the center of the Jaeger, through a hole where the spine would be in a living creature.  They can hear grating sounds—the conn-pod being lifted and maneuvered, but they are suspended in liquid darkness and it all feels very far away.

Rachel was right though. The LCL feels warm—pleasantly so. Like a protective body, or a soft blanket on a cold day. It smells a little like blood, but Jake doesn’t let that bother him. He should be terrified, but with Rachel’s hand firm in his own, this is the safest he’s ever felt since the last time his mother rocked him to sleep.

 

It’s startling when the HUD activates because suddenly Jake can _see_. It’s too much to take in at once and he closes his eyes to give his brain a moment to adjust but he can _still_ see everything and all of the whirring controls in his mind.

“Jake take a breath,” Eva says over the com, “remember you aren’t wearing helmets. Everything is connected through the nervous system. This is just like the simulations.”

It’s _not_ entirely like the simulations, there’s so much _more_. Jake realized quickly that his main line of sight must have been the Jaegers actual eyes. Overlaid are all the systems—infrared detecting the head signatures, bio-matter detecting what all life forms surrounded them. The schematics telling them distances and speeds of objects. It’s jumbled up and Jake feels cross-eyed.

“Initiating neural handshake in fifteen seconds,” says Erek King’s voice. It sounded slightly detached and must be the AI for the machine.

Rachel gives Jake’s hand a squeeze and she means to pull away, but Jake doesn’t want to lose contact until they’re connected and he holds onto her. She doesn’t resist. This is the moment of truth—if they can drift in this Jaeger they will pilot it. The Jaeger Tom almost died in.

The AI counts down and Jake falls into what’s familiar and safe—Rachel.

But it’s not entirely Rachel.

There aren’t memories—at least nothing that Jake and Rachel would call memories—but there is a sense of something _other_ sharing their minds. It’s connecting them, it _is_ the drift, and it is familiar and comforting in that fact. It curls around them, wrapping even tighter and pressing in more intimately than the LCL in their lungs. Jake can almost feel the weight of the Jaeger’s body now, and movement becomes difficult even though the LCL didn’t have any resistance before.

With the Jaeger’s mind and their own, they can now make proper sense of all of their information. Three brains are better than one.

There’s a large crowd below and they cheer when the Jaeger lights up, signaling that the drift is complete.

“The Drift is secure,” Eva says, “and now we’re going to start the test. Rachel, Jake: walk.”

They don’t have to move their legs, the impulse comes entirely from the brain, but old habits die hard. Together they lift their right leg and feel the pull and weight of their muscles moving in unison, and lean forwards to set it down.

They’re _doing_ it.

Rachel’s thrill is amping up Jake’s, and it’s feeding back to her. They’re both giddy with excitement and pride, and they swing the left leg around.

The toe catches on the heel of the right leg and they go down hard. They catch themselves with outstretched hands—the fingers on the Jaeger look very delicate for its intended purposes, the both notice—and manage to push themselves up again.

“What’s going on?” Eva asks.

“Sorry,” they say at the same time. Rachel lets Jake take the lead here, though his words are just as much hers as they are his own, “the weight is distributed differently, and the legs are closer than we expected. Just getting a feel for it. It won’t happen again, Ma’am.”

“Good. How are the arms—can you please pick up the table in front of you? I know for a fact I ordered everything to be cleared, but try not to break it.”

They can hear a quiet ‘sorry that was me’ from Erek King from Eva’s com.

The table, a little fold-out that Erek uses to hold parts and tools as he inspects and cleans them, is halfway across the hangar. It would take a normal Jaeger five strides. They make it in two, and then crouch to pick it up.

The sensory system is incredible, and they can feel the give of the plastic against their fingers and are able to pick the table up without breaking it.

The thought strikes Jake that they could pick up a human without fear. Inevitably thoughts of watching Tom and Elfangor pilot this Jaeger come to mind, and he feels a tug to chase after them. Rachel immediately shouts and, being close enough, reaches out and grabs him. He’s jolted out of the memory and realizes he’s broken the table.

A surge of protectiveness bubbles up like lava from the seafloor, spills into their minds and it’s not from either of them. It’s gone just as it starts, leaving them tingling with an aftertaste of something they didn’t realize they’d sampled and a resounding _mine_ ringing in their brains.

“What just happened?” Peter asked, “we just got some strange readings.”

“Jake got caught in a memory,” Rachel replied immediately, and she’s looking at Jake and the two of them don’t even know how to describe what they just felt.

“Sorry it won’t happen again,” Jake said, “and sorry about the table.”

 

Eva has them run a lap around the Shatterdome, perform some leaps. The Jaeger can _jump_. It’s the only Jaeger in existence that can jump vertically from a stationary position.

Alloran wanted them to test the weapons system, and have them destroy the rusted shell of an old Jaeger model. Jake and Rachel feel a sense of sadness at the once-magnificent machine being reduced to target practice, but the thrill of anything resembling a fight has them eager to go.

The Jaeger moves like a dream and they are practically dancing inside the LCL, suspended in liquid and no matter how they turn or where they face they are connected to the Jaeger and can do whatever they want. At the same time they realize it means they can hold hands or even hold one another and still be able to run and fight. There’s a sick pleasure at the image of being snuggled up to one another while thoughts of malice run through their minds.

The other interesting part is the sheer glee they get in destroying the old Jaeger. It’s subtle, the emotions, only recognizable after the punch is thrown. There are no words or specific thoughts, but _feelings_ , like colors flashing in front of their eyes, and it’s a sense of _victory_ that they get when they rip the old conn-pod from the Jaeger’s hull and crush it in their hands.

“Congratulations Jake and Rachel. We’re going to crunch our final numbers still but you two are going to be the pilots of the new age. Now head back to the dock and we’ll get you unloaded,” Eva said. She sounded proud of them and they shared a surge of happiness at having done good.

Another taste of emotion slipped through them, leaving the sensation that they should not leave. They held hands the entire walk back.

Getting out of the conn-pod required help as they were too busy coughing up LCL to pull their bodies out. They two of them lay gasping, still holding hands to have _some_ connection after losing the drift, and didn’t acknowledge the fact that it felt like their Jaeger had been communicating with them.


End file.
